Tag: improving health

Breath is what is called a primary pattern, meaning it’s one of the first things a child does when he or she is born. Your whole body responds to the air that you bring in through your lungs, not just your chest, and oxygen is the most vital nutrient your body requires.

While you can live without food and water for days, possibly months, you will survive for a mere four minutes, six at best, without air. Your breath is the interface between voluntary movement and the more passive activities of your organs because it can be somewhat controlled by conscious effort. But, when we let go with our attention, breath continues to flow into our tissues and feed our cells.

Sadly, many people have forgotten how to breathe. Fear, worry, and stress contract the tissues around the rib cage and bring in only a small amount of air, just barely enough to maintain basic functions. Some people teach that there is a “proper” way to breathe, for meditation, yoga, tai chi, qi gong, relaxation, labor, etc.

It’s easy to learn a breath pattern that serves a particular activity and then to get stuck there indefinitely. These patterns, which at first liberate us from our own neurological rut, transform into a prison with no alternatives. When you have one choice, you have a prison, two choices is a dilemma, and having three choices equals adaptability. We’re striving for adaptability.

Breath is a powerful tool, and when you develop awareness of your own pattern, you can alter it to accompany sports, change your emotions, increase or decrease muscular tension, activate your organs, strengthen your singing or speaking voice, and to support or change the curvature of your spine. And you thought breath just oxygenated your blood! By working with the flow of breath in your body, you basically go beneath all the harmful and damaging movement patterns you’ve learned throughout your life and reset your body in a neutral place. This is, of course, a process and a practice; however, for profound physical and emotional changes, there is no greater lever than breath work.

Your ribs function much like Venetian blinds that hang in a window. If you’ve ever looked at a skeleton, you’ll notice that the rib bones are flat and wide, not round like most people assume. In a living body, the ribs – actually, all bones – are flexible, soft, and pliable. Unfortunately, science studies dead bodies that are devoid of fluid, so we mistakenly think of bones as dried up, rock hard structures. The reality is quite the contrary! In fact, even in dried bone, if the bone is chipped or broken in half, you will see a honeycomb of very fragile calcium strata that looks like a delicate beehive.

Living bone is more like a sponge than a rock. Yes, it’s more stable than muscle or connective tissue, but our bones, like the rest of our body, hold a lot of fluid in them. This allows your bones to adjust to breath and other subtle rhythms within the body. As you inhale, your whole body should open up and go into external rotation (palms moving outward, legs rotating away from the hips, spine extending – imagine a starfish reaching outward with all five arms), and as you exhale, your body should subtly reverse the movement, coming inward towards the fetal position.

Did you know that everywhere you have ribs, you also have lung space? You have just as much rib bone in your back as you do in the front of your body, therefore, you also have just as much availability for breath and movement in your back.

The primary muscle to initiate breath should be the diaphragm; however, most people are unaware of how their diaphragms function. It is a large, dome shaped muscle that spans your costal arch (the front, lower part of your ribs, where your abdomen begins). As you inhale, the dome flattens downward, toward your feet, pulling air into the chest cavity. When you exhale, the muscle relaxes and is pulled back up towards the sky, pressing air out of your lungs.

Breathing rhythms are too small to notice most of the time. They are overshadowed by the greater vibrations in our world – cars, music, chatting on the telephone. We rarely pause long enough to pay attention to our breathing, and equally as dangerous, when we do pay attention, we are usually trying to control and manipulate it rather than allow it to flow naturally and fully. Breath should move organically to release blockages of tension and negative emotion that have been stored in the body.

Trying too hard to control the breath can result in pain, discomfort, or reduced range of motion if you become fixated in one type of breath work. Try the following exercises to begin. monitoring your breathing. I find it easiest to do this while lying down, but you can also sit in a chair if that’s more comfortable. Allow your breath to flow in and out of your body in a natural rhythm. You may be surprised to discover that you take in very little air! That’s okay, don’t try to change anything just yet.

– Notice whether you pause after you inhale or exhale or if you just keep on breathing.

– Spend a little time focusing on your diaphragm and imagining the large dome flattening out when you inhale, resuming its dome-like shape as you exhale.

– Do you feel movement in any other areas of your body when you breathe, such as your spine, hands, feet, arms, legs, or even your head?

– Do you have more breath in the front of your body or the back of your body?

– Begin to explore the edges of the shape of your breath. For example, if you feel your breath makes a narrow tube down the center of your body, start feeling where the edges of the tube exist. How far down does it travel? Breathe into the edges as you explore.

The simple act of noticing your breath will begin to shift the pattern. Don’t try too hard! That negates the purpose of the exercise.

This is a very good and thorough article I thought you might like from Deike Begg, Rebirther and Rebirthing Trainer, Psycotherapist, Author of Rebirthing-Freedom from Your Past, and Astrologer based in London.

Rebirthing is about rebirth of the soul. In Rebirthing you are taught how to consciously connect to your soul by connecting with spiritual energy and drawing it inside yourself with the breath. The effects of this are immediate and permanent. Every little step of progress is irreversible and every little step is an initiation for the soul.

Essentially, Rebirthing is a breathing therapy in which you consciously connect to the divine power of the universe so that it will cleanse and transform you. It is not first and foremost concerned with the birth process and reliving the birth trauma. There are many people who have never experienced a rebirth in that sense during their sessions.

The Rebirthing process itself is based on a very specific advanced breathing technique. Developed in the early 1970s, mainly by the American Leonard Orr, it can have the most amazing results physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Although it is safe to practice and powerfully life-enhancing, you should not attempt to do it on your own at first. The changes that could occur during a session including variations in body temperature and strange feelings and visions, for instance need to be facilitated by a trained practitioner in order to provide you with the fullest benefits and lead you through to the final high point when you can experience your own bliss, inner light and union with a greater whole.

There are many misconceptions concerning Rebirthing. It is not a form of hyperventilation, quite the opposite in fact; nor is it primarily a form of relaxation. We don’t smother people with pillows or restrain them in any way. The individual lies down on a mattress and will breathe in a certain way for about an hour. During this time the most extraordinary things can happen.

We must remember that we exhale approximately 70% of body waste. Only 3% is discarded by defecation, 7% by urination and 20% through the skin. This means that during a session of deep Rebirthing, when we breathe in a certain way, and when the breath reaches deeper into our cellular structure than anything else we know, a profound cleansing of our being takes place. One belief is that we store memory (of traumas, accidents, shame etc) in the body as chemicals and when these get released through the cleansing breath they leave the body and can no longer affect us in negative ways. So in that sense after each Rebirth one is a different person. Although Rebirthing is not a quick fix, because you need to do the breathing, which can stir up all kinds of blockages, it is the fastest working therapy I know.

How I Developed My Rebirthing Work

My Rebirthing work developed out of my rich psychotherapeutic training background, with a sound grounding in Psychosynthesis, Jungian psychology, Gestalt therapy with its emphasis on voice dialogue, past-life therapy and astrology. For 17 out of the past 26 years I have undergone various types of psychotherapy myself. They were an adventurous journey and a wonderful opportunity for self-discovery. (Psychotherapy is not to be confused with psychiatric treatment, which often only employs the use of drugs.)

I particularly took to guided imagery and Gestalt therapy. In guided imagery a person is taken on an inner journey, for instance up to a mountain top where they might meet their Higher Self in the form of a wise being, or into a cave deep within the bowels of the Earth to encounter a lost and perhaps long-forgotten fragment of themselves. Guided imagery, properly used, effectively employs the imagination to access memory. But on its own, without conscious connected breathing (the Rebirthing breath), it cannot bring about the physical cleansing process of the cells nor the brilliant and supernatural visionary experiences encountered in Rebirthing.

Gestalt therapy also uses the body as a sounding board and as a link to hidden fragments of ourselves, but here the eyes are generally kept open and one experiences oneself as one is in the very moment of therapy. It is a ‘here and now’ therapy. Much attention is given to body language, quality and tone of voice, tightness of muscles, etc., and the client is encouraged to go along with the fantasy they are having in the here and now and to act it out in the session. The therapist then guides the client, through various techniques to discover that all his or her conflicts rest somewhere within their own nature, and gradually, psychic contents that were previously disowned and projected onto other people, are re-owned and subsequently integrated.

My Rebirthing technique rests on the shoulders of these two therapies because both are ideally suited for use for breath work. Without their deeper dimensions breathing therapy can be shallow, meaningless and dull.

It is also important, if one wants to work in this meaningful way with the breath, to have an understanding of other cultures, of mythology, fairy tales and astrology. The imagery that can emerge during sessions is often of an archetypal (collective) nature, belonging to ancestral or racial memory and frequently of cosmic dimensions. It is a region diametrically opposed to our ordinary conscious world, a region that is inhabited by strange beings, shapes, colours and lights. It is useful for the Rebirthing therapist therefore to know, for instance, that a snake is a symbol of wisdom, as well as a frightening image for some; that a spider, as Maya, is also the great celestial spinner of illusion and fate, even for those with a spider phobia.

During Rebirthing people frequently see images of various planets, stars and constellations, and knowledge of astrology can be invaluable for the practitioner. The birth chart not only tells me much about a person’s character, but also reveals the current cosmic conditions with which they need to co-operate. It can tell me whether a person is about to have a nervous breakdown or a spiritual emergence. It is interesting how many people come to Rebirthing when their birth charts are ‘activated’ by one of the outer planets, i.e., Uranus(sudden, unexpected changes), Neptune (dissolution of former way of being, sacrifice and renunciation) or Pluto (death and rebirth and empowerment). Certain planets promote a rapid Rebirth, others indicate that major blocks to the flow of energy to and from the soul exist and need to be dealt with and dissolved. This might take two or more sessions.

The bodywork of Gestalt therapy has proved immensely helpful during breathing sessions, whilst guided imagery not only makes it a joy to work with people’s emerging stories but also enables me to guide them more deeply into their inner worlds. And my work with sub-personalities (different aspects of ourselves that co-exist within us) greatly facilitates the process of integration of different parts of one’s being.

Your Journey

With Rebirthing breathing you enter totally new territory, a terra incognita. You find yourself in the strangest lands and circumstances. Whilst you will not lose your connection with the world you live in here and now, you can at the same time have experiences of another world, a different dimension and time. The ‘trick’ in Rebirthing is to allow yourself to dwell in that unknown world for long enough for a transformation to occur. That world lies in what Deepak Chopra in his book Quantum Healing calls the ‘gap’. In this gap creativity, inspiration, super-intelligence and supernatural visions have their abode.

You would not set out on a journey through unknown terrain without a map or a guide. It would be foolish to start out on your own without someone who knows what lies ahead, knows the road and knows how (but not where) it might end. The same applies to Rebirthing; you need a skilled guide to help you over tricky hurdles and to hold your hand or encourage you when you feel stuck or think you cannot go on. It is the consciousness that we bring to breath work that is the determining factor. Also, during the first few sessions you may need a great deal of encouragement just to keep breathing, for if you don’t breathe properly nothing will happen. After several years of Rebirthing I still prefer to do my breathing with someone else present, if only to keep me breathing and from dropping off to sleep. If you are willing to do the work, to breathe as never before and trust the transformative powers of the breath, you will make contact with universal forces.

The Buddha taught that conscious inhalation and exhalation leads eventually to the knowledge of liberation. When we breathe consciously we become aware of that which is normally unconscious. If we change the rhythm of our breathing we change our minds and the way to change the rhythm is to give conscious attention to breathing. When we give attention to breathing and rhythm we transform air into magical essence.

In order to get the best out of a Rebirthing session you will need to suspend your disbelief in a force greater than yourself. You will need to remain open to the incoming breath, keep breathing calmly and ‘wait upon the will of heaven’. If you breathe, relax and allow things to happen, rather than trying to control them, you will have a Rebirth. You will come to a natural end of the breathing cycle when you either open your eyes spontaneously or drift into a gentle ‘yoga’ sleep, but before that you will have had one of the most astonishing experiences ever.

Sometimes the most amazing images of brilliant colours and patterns appear before your inner vision. Sometimes there is a very bright light, so bright that it ought to hurt your eyes but doesn’t. Sometimes your whole body can feel as if it has become infused with this light, causing you to lose all sense of normal bodily awareness. (You have probably heard and read much about the divine light. Well, this is the only way I have ever been able to ‘be in the light’ and to have the light enter me.) Sometimes a numinous figure, a wise or even Christ-like being appears. Aldus Huxley, in The Doors of Perception, talks about similar experiences but with the help of hallucinogenic drugs, and puts it like this:

“Sometimes people see visions, which may be of Christ Himself. Sometimes they hear the voice of the Great Spirit. Sometimes they become aware of the presence of God and of those personal shortcomings which must be corrected if they are to do His will.”

For some of you what I have been talking about here is familiar, but for those who have not yet had an experience of entering that other dimension all this will have little meaning. I do hope, however, to have aroused sufficient curiosity for people to experiment, if possible, with a skilled Rebirther who has already visited transpersonal realms.

by Leonard Orr
If you hold your breath for a few minutes, just one breath becomes the most valuable thing in the world. Therefore learning how to breathe better might be the most important thing that we can do with our money. And yet people spend $1000, which is a couple of car payments or rent payments, and never think of investing $1000 in improving their breathing ability, which they can use for the rest of their lives. Breathworkers deserve $100 per session because they sometimes take 2 hours or more. Most health professionals charge $50 to $150 per hour and give less value. Conscious Breathing tunes us into the Breath of Life. It enables us to contact the headwaters of our Life-stream, which is the Breath of Life Itself. Learning the ability to breathe Energy as well as air has all kinds of practical values: it improves our physical health, it enables us to feel happy more, it increases our ability to receive love and give love which makes our relationships work better. Conscious Breathing improves our Energy level, which enables us to produce more and increase our income. Therefore investing $1000 in 10 Conscious Breathing lessons comes back to us many times over in tangible as well as intangible value. Since God is the source of the Breath, Conscious Breathing enables us to contact God more efficiently and bring the power of Spirit into our body more efficiently. The Mind and the Breath are the king and queen of human consciousness. Learning to breathe from the Breath Itself makes Breathing more pleasurable and Life more pleasurable. The sooner we learn it, the sooner we get the benefit. Make an appointment with your local Breathworker today and start your 10 sessions. Sessions are usually done one per week; in some cases, one or two per month. But one per week is a good frequency for most people. Most Breathworkers are willing to work out a payment plan or negotiate so that money is not a barrier to learning this important skill. Breathworkers are people who have been properly trained to give sessions and who give sessions as a full time career. It is recommended that we interview 3 or 4 Breathworkers before choosing one to go through the ten sessions with. It’s valuable to have a Breathing teacher that we enjoy working with. Sometimes Breathworkers have introductory lectures but they are not necessary. The important thing is to make an appointment and experience your first session and find out what Conscious Breathing and a complete Energy cycle is all about. Most people experience the richest peace and relaxation that they have ever experienced as a result of their first session. It is normal for people to have a completed Energy cycle during their first session. Recommended Reading & Listening:

Breath Awareness – by Leonard Orr
Intuitive Breathing (tape) – by Leonard Orr
The Rebirth Seminar (2 tapes) – by Leonard Orr
Rebirthing in the New Age – by Leonard Orr & Sondra Ray
Leonard Orr’s books & tapes as well as a selection of other very valuable materials are available for sale on his web site (rebirthingbreathwork.com) or at Inspiration University, ph (540) 885-0551- fax (540) 885-1230

Information about the Leonard Orr Training Center is available on his web site. Or call (540) 885-0551